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Full-Text Articles in Law
Supreme Court Watch, Reginald Oh
Supreme Court Watch, Reginald Oh
Law Faculty Articles and Essays
Discusses the case in the 2004-05 U.S. Supreme Court Term which decided a constitutional challenge to the State of California's practice of temporarily racially segregating its prisoners. On November 2, 2004, the Court heard oral arguments in Johnson v. California, a lawsuit brought by an African-American prison inmate in the California Department of Corrections. The petitioner contends that the state's longstanding policy of racially segregating prisoners for sixty days violates the Equal Protection Clause. On February 23, 2005, the Court issued its opinion in ]ohnson v. California, 125 S. Ct. 1141 (2005), and held that the policy of …
The Majoritarian Difficulty: Affirmative Action, Sodomy, And Supreme Court Politics, Darren L. Hutchinson
The Majoritarian Difficulty: Affirmative Action, Sodomy, And Supreme Court Politics, Darren L. Hutchinson
Faculty Articles
This Article challenges liberal and conservative assessments of Lawrence, Gratz, and Grutter. Although the outcome of these cases might indeed prove helpful to the agendas of social movements for racial and sexual justice, progressive scholars and activists should not receive these cases with elation. Instead, the research of constitutional theorists, critical legal scholars, and political scientists allows for a more contextualized and guarded account of and reaction to these decisions. Instead of representing extraordinary victories for oppressed classes, these cases reflect majoritarian and moderate views concerning civil rights, and the opinions contain many doctrinal elements that reinforce, …
Curiouser And Curiouser: Involuntary Medications And Incompetent Criminal Defendants After Sell V. United States, Dora W. Klein
Curiouser And Curiouser: Involuntary Medications And Incompetent Criminal Defendants After Sell V. United States, Dora W. Klein
Faculty Articles
The government should not place a defendant to whom it is administering involuntary medications in front of a jury. The test the Supreme Court created in Sell v. United States will likely result in the administration of involuntary medications to incompetent defendants in more than rare instances. Given the importance of the right to a fair trial, and the threat to this right posed by administering involuntary medications, the Supreme Court understandably cautions in its decision in Sell that the instances in which the government will be justified in administering such medications for the purpose of rendering a defendant competent …
Hands Off Policy: Equal Protection And The Contact Sports Exemption Of Title Ix, Jamal Greene
Hands Off Policy: Equal Protection And The Contact Sports Exemption Of Title Ix, Jamal Greene
Faculty Scholarship
Before becoming a poster child for gender equity in athletics, Heather Sue Mercer was an all-state place kicker at Yorktown Heights High School in Yorktown Heights, New York (pop. 7,972). She enrolled at Duke University in the fall of 1994 and decided to become the first woman ever to try out for the Duke football team. Initially she failed to make the team as a walk-on, but the following spring she was invited by the seniors on the team to play in the annual Blue-White scrimmage. She ended up kicking a game-winning twenty-eight-yard field goal. Afterwards, Duke head coach Fred …
Defining The Constitutional Question In Partisan Gerrymandering, Richard Briffault
Defining The Constitutional Question In Partisan Gerrymandering, Richard Briffault
Faculty Scholarship
Vieth v. Jubelirer is a significant setback to efforts to challenge partisan gerrymandering in court. Four members of the Supreme Court repudiated Davis v. Bandemer and concluded that partisan gerrymanders present a nonjusticiable question, while the fifth, Justice Kennedy, determined that the Court ought to "refrain from intervention" at this time, although he left open the hope that gerrymandering might become justiciable if the right standard of proving a gerrymander is ever found. Yet, strikingly, all nine members of the Supreme Court agreed that, justiciable or not, partisan gerrymanders do raise a constitutional question and some partisan gerrymanders are unconstitutional. …
Judging Partisan Gerrymanders Under The Elections Clause, Jamal Greene
Judging Partisan Gerrymanders Under The Elections Clause, Jamal Greene
Faculty Scholarship
Twice in the last two decades, the Supreme Court has come within two votes of declaring partisan gerrymandering – the manipulation of district lines for partisan ends – a nonjusticiable political question. Last Term, in Vieth v. Jubelirer, Pennsylvania Democrats challenged an alleged Republican gerrymander of the state's congressional districts. Four members of the Court thought the question nonjusticiable, and one, Justice Kennedy, thought it justiciable under the Equal Protection Clause but nonetheless rejected the plaintiffs claims. Eighteen years earlier, in Davis v. Bandemer, a three-Justice plurality had held that a political group complaining of partisan gerrymandering – the Democratic …